Citizenship? Borders? Who Needs 'Em? - Awesome Halftime: gagablog 137

If you fight over something enough you will destroy it and there will be nothing left to fight over.

This is the principle of the Solomon Solution - Let the Non-Violent Women Protesters Govern Syria - first suggested here 5 years ago. Fighting over Syria has destroyed Syria, proving my point.

Fighting over borders will ultimately destroy borders. Fighting over power will destroy power-structures, which is one way to interpret the Trump era. Fighting over citizenship will end the concept of citizenship.

Compromising over all of these issues will preserve them and improve them. We can have borders and citizenships but only when they don't hurt people. When they are the tools of exclusion and oppression they will be destroyed.

Is American Citizenship an Invitation to Hope and Manifesting Dreams? Or is it a tool of oppression? It is both: it is the second part, oppression, that makes people exclusive about citizenship. These people are trying to protect citizenship and borders as tools of oppression. There is a way to be proud of one's country that is not bad or damaging and it is the way of Welcome, of wanting to share the goodness of cultures and places and that is the first kind of citizenship, the good kind of National Pride, wanting to set a good example and benefit from immigrants and visitors.

Openness is nothing to fight about, it's goodness becomes more apparent as we open up. Closed-borders, closed-mindedness, results in conflicts. If we fight over borders we will end up deciding borders are stupid and we will evolve past the idea. If we decide to respect them, and respect people equally on either side of them, we can keep them and they will be quaint and nice and serve some enjoyable purpose.

The same is true for citizenship - we should be proud if anyone wants to be a citizen of our country and let them be. That should be true for every country, for every person who is actually proud of their country. The reason to be exclusive is you feel guilt for injustice and you don't want new perspectives that will expose that injustice.

It all comes out in the citizenship debate - so far I have been focused on a lot of the hypocrisy between people who are protesting Trump's travel ban but were never protesting, objecting, or making themselves aware of Obama's severe restrictions or the Obama-Clinton policies that created the situation in the first place.

The first Trump attack, in Yemen, is attracting criticism after killing at least 15 civilians and an American soldier in addition to their targets. It was all planned by Obama's team and merely required Trump's approval - I'm sure they told him it was just doing his job and maybe he didn't need much convincing. My point in bringing it up is to say that the System HAS all the things Trump is guilty of, already built in. It's always been bad and can finally be made better, now, that we are exposing it all, openly - even though there is still a focus on certain things to keep us from exposing it all, you can see it all unravelling and everything is coming out.

The argument over citizenship will reveal many racist and unjust programs built into our system, but more than that it will expose the bad stuff about exlusive citizenship so much that we reconsider and end the whole concept. Ultimately people will be able to be citizens of as many countries as they like, it will be a big popularity contest, and countries will compete for citizens just like companies compete for customers - but it will be more like musicians and their audiences where there is enough to go around for everyone so the competition is friendly - becoming more familiar with any one music, culture, or nation will lend to learning about more.

The Irony of the Citizenship "Debate" is trying to deny citizenship to "certain people" when this ignores two very important truths: Naturalized citizens and refugees and immigrants are usually "better citizens", more engaged and appreciative of the country, than natural-born citizens who often take it for granted or at least don't really have to learn anything about the country to pass any tests as people who earn citizenship do.

But the more important problem in America is that ("You know what Dr King said, 'a riot is the language of the unheard" someone on FOX just reminded me of the accurate quote I messed up last time) not all citizens are Equal Citizens - minorities are systematically oppressed.

Especially black Americans and it shows how crooked the system is that oppression of black people stayed the same in many ways through 8 years of Obama, our first black or ex-black president. Someone who wrote a book on the prison system was on NPR mentioning that the Constitutional Amendment banning Slavery makes the exception for prisoners.  With racist policing, the "War on Drugs" (which is jusy police corruption  organized crime punishing the working class) and a racist and classist justice system this end us enslaving disproportionate black people and many people of every race and continues Slavery to this day.

Not all American citizens have "equal citizenship" - many black people and have been systematically denied their voting rights and Berners got a taste of that last year, too. If we have to fight about that, if we have to fight too much to get equal rights for everyone who already IS a citizen, the meaning of"citizenship" will diminish to nothing. If we make it more inclusive and equally empowering it will increase the meaning and value of citizenship and will be something people admire and want for themselves or to emulate in their own country.

I proposed the SEEP immigration plan a few months ago to grant citizenship to Soldiers, Emergency Personel (cops and firefighters and EMTs and Nurses and Doctors) Educators and Politicians, We would do it in that order to get the most political support and show how well it works.

By "contrast" (magic/irony) a law just passed the Republican-led Colorado Senate to force cops to be citizens or become citizens or lose their jobs. The cops oppose this because it will hurt their recrutiing. My plan would help their recruiting and make real, organic connections with the communities they serve, helping their ability to do their jobs safely for everyone. See how this works? My idea, an inclusive, hopeful one, brings people together and makes everything better. Bad ideas are divisive - this one has the Republicans Versus the Cops, of all "enemies" - and divisive systems will crumble and fall, one way or another.

It's great that states are suing and blocking Trump's travel ban and people are protesting it and the media is covering it and everyone is learning how unamerican and bad these ideas are. On the other hand Trump rules by fear and could make an attack to "prove " himself right and blame the Judicial system - or people can conclude "the system works" and disengage if the courts prevail. Or we could all learn a better way.

We know we aren't going to rely on Democrats anymore - the media is trying to play up their "opposition" to Trump but they are all revealed as clowns, like at the rodeo. I loved hearing the luchador on NPR who is a Bad Guy, using the American Flag with Trump's face and tight's with Trump's face on the butt and offensive language to rile up the crowd. The fans love him and appreciate that his role is for them to vent upon him - they love him. It's an interesting parallel to "real life" but of course the Real Trump causes real suffering - but also serves this role for us all to vent on him and identify what is wrong.

And it brings us together - but this can become mob mentality and counter-productive if we don't have enough perspective to focus on the most important issues and become as effective agents for change as we can. If it brings us together with focus we can do so much and this is the beauty of the outcome of the 2016 election.

Hillary's theft of the primary taught us we can't trust them or wait for them to do anything - we should have elected Bernie but for their corruption, or all gotten behind Jill and really went for it - she would have won, or Tulsi Gabbard would have if she had run - she just got criticized for meeting Assad.

And Trump is revealing every problem there is, one after another, and provides multiple "focuses" for us to approach. We win on every front because we have the Truth, the Future, on our side.

But there is One Focus we can make to win the best and fastest, to overthrow all the evil in the system at once, like a keystone or lynchpin we can pull out and watch it all fall. It's Standing Rock and just as it seems "tougher than ever" with Trump in office it actually becomes clear and easy to do.

Trump gave the go-ahead and the Army approved it, even though it violates treaties and the world is uniting behind the people and their rights as well as all of our right and duty to preserve nature and go green, end this Oil Evil. Since then, Seattle has divested all business with Wells Fargo, the main bank behind the Dakota Access Pipeline project. This will hopefull start a trend with people demanding that their cities do the same which can ultimately end Wells Fargo altogether, especially on the heels f their recent scamming of their customers by making fake accounts. We just end the largest bank on earth to show they can't make the pipeline and that will show them how it will be from now on.

This is easy stuff once we start it. Occupy Wells Fargo #occupywellsfargo or just a social media campaign, such as the one ending Uber, can show that we won't put up with oppressive powers, be they companies or governments.

We are the power, we have the power, and we will realize this and use it better and better, because they are forcing us to since they won't represent us as they claim to.

Gaga put on the best halftime show ever, it made people feel good by including everyone. If you don't get why exclusion is wrong, here is my hypothetical: what if we said we will take citizenship away from anyone who is racist or who would deny citizenship to anyone else? How would they like that? What country would we make them citizens of - the ones they were prejudiced against? A literal "walk a mile in their shoes" and see what it is like? Or make them "non-citizens" who have to earn their citizenship back by being tolerant?

See how wrong that would be, to be exclusive even based on intolerance? So how much worse is it to be exclusive based on nationality, religion, or race, or anything?

I don't want to talk about the game part of the Superbowl except that it showed how we can all unite over some things, like wanting the Falcons to win. Oh Well. Gaga was amazing and showed how unity triumphs over division, because even if it was a Great Game in many ways the halftime show was the best.

Fighting is stupid and we are smarter and better than that. We learn from each other when we get past fear. What we fight over will destroy us or we will destroy it - or we will learn to stop fighting. The leaders of the Russian-backed revolution in Ukraine are being blown up and the Ukrainians are saying they aren't doing it, maybe it is the Russians. It's hard to know about any of this stuff but just as Trumps Supreme Court nominee said he felt discouraged and other stuff by Trump's comments it shows how bad ideas make things crumble from within.

Good ideas bring us together in healing. It will become easy for us all to tell the difference.

There is a new survey of 250,000 potsmokers, the story title is "What is the favorite strain?" but it also showed 60% of people use weed to reduce alcohol consumption and 95% of them use it to ween off of legal, pharmacuetical opioids which are the REAL drug problem in America now, not anything from Mexico as much - so weed is the SOLUTION to America's Drug and Alcohol problems, as we've been saying for decades. It's the Future  - Green America.